Still beading away, a little collage and Georgia O'Keeffe

I am in love with the earthy colors of this latest bracelet I put together tonight. It's a really unusual mix- sort of burnt umber, burnt sienna, magenta, browns, coppers and some animal print. It has a nest, birds, leaves and beads of glass, resin, pewter, ceramic and lampwork. I don't want to love it too much, though, because I really want to sell it.

The coral and silver bracelet has some really great findings, especially some lacey bead caps on the tiniest bits of coral. This one is just waiting for me to string up the turquoise table-cut beads and then assemble the whole thing. The beads look like Chiclets to me: a gum I used to obsess about. I've also always been partial to turquoise and coral when they are done up like this- in an Indian or southwest/cowgirl style. Oh-oh, another bracelet trying to talk its way into my jewelry box.

I'm pretty sure after that one, I am done with jewelry-making for awhile. I've pretty much exhausted my stash of beads and findings, so I need to make some more mad money!

The collage above is part of an 8.5 x 11 inch collage I started last year. I thought it was finished once, but I found some more great ephemera to add to it. I still haven't figured out if it is done yet, or what it means, since I've never seen any of those sites.

Speaking of southwest, I did some interesting reading today about the great American painter Georgia O'Keeffe and her husband, the great photographer, Arthur Stieglitz. O'Keeffe is known for her paintings of the flora and fauna of the southwest, but Stieglitz is best known for his nude photographs of O'Keeffe. When one pictures O'Keeffe we probably think of her in her later years- small, gray, wrinkled, weather-beaten, sort of an artistic version of Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies. But O'Keeffe was aparently quite the sensual creature in her earlier years, becoming Stieglitz's muse and most important influence.

I was doing a little refresher because there is an O'Keeffee exhibit in Kalamazoo until Sept. 13 that I would like to see: Georgia O'Keeffe and her times: American Modernism along with Through the Photographer's Lens: O'Keeffe and her circle. You can find more about it at the Kalamazoo Art Institute here. And thanks to Joanne Thieme-Huffman for the heads up.